a sword of handpicked flowers—Ø
by Flashing The Floods
Summary: She despises herself more than words can convey and she uses that as fuel to recklessly drive herself to the thick of every labyrinth, into the face of every wretched witch. Female!Castiel. PMMM AU. Rule 63. Crap punctation, crap everything. Very mild, blink-and-miss-it femslash.


**Author's Note: Blargh. I'm still busy as shit, but since I already missed the deadline to upload something for the twins' birthday I didn't wanna miss Castiel's birthday too. ****Edit: Even though I just missed that deadline and now it's a day late. But eh, one day o_e'**

**With that said, I didn't have a lot of time to come up with whatever. I'm like, recycling my own brain puke. What I almost recycled was Werewolf!Castiel from Narcoleptic Nihilism, but on the off-chance someone does happen to ever want me to actually continue that, I decided not to. ****Instead here's Cisswapped!Castiel as a magical girl a la Madoka style~! Other cisswaps and genderbends (meaning trans) accordingly. Also, whoever spots Anthy gets 100 points o3o**

* * *

Cassidy can't get the reek of hospital out of her nose. It's a deplorable smell, the odor of antiseptic and drying tears and sleepless nights. She attacked a vending machine that wouldn't spit out her fruit snacks just so she could open the bag and inhale the artificial citrus, but that still did nothing so now she's out here chain smoking, absorbing the thick smolder of hot ash just to keep herself grounded and she still can't banish that fucking hospital reek.

But she didn't leave Leigh in the waiting room by herself just because she couldn't handle it, no, Cassidy's waiting for the cat-weasel-thing, Kyubey.

_Where the fuck are you!?_ she thinks to it desperately.

_"I apologize for being tardy. I was contracting another magical girl when you informed me of your decision."_

The voice somehow echoes from right behind Cassidy even though the decibels carry through her ears alone. She wheels around to see the strange albino creature sitting in the parking lot with its head tilted up so it can meet her gaze with its perpetually unblinking one.

"Save Lysandra," she demands, cigarette falling from her lips and joining the pile of crushed out butts. She stomps and squishes it down with the toe of her boot, never breaking eye contact with Kyubey. "That's my wish, save Lysandra."

_"Very well."_

Kyubey lashes its tail and the appendages in its ears extend, and Cassidy barely knows what's happening but all of a sudden there is the sensation of gravity spitting her out. Something compresses painfully in her chest and jets out in an enraged volcano, her veins lava. She doesn't recall closing her eyes but when she opens them she's on her knees with her hands out and a glowing scarlet thing she can most equate to a Fabergé egg is sitting in her palm. It feels warm, almost like it's alive.

_"The contract is made_," Kyubey's plastic, chipper voice announces between her temples. "_Your wish has overcome entropy."_

_Ø_

Cassidy goes on her first witch hunt the very next night. Her weapon is a claymore and though she's never used one before, she thinks it suits her. More than her outfit does, anyway. She doesn't like skirts, but when she transforms her normal clothes shimmer away on her skin and leave her in a black and red tiered skirt and a checkered halter-top of the same color scheme. Thigh-high stockings are the same patten as the top and fingerless black gloves come up to her forearms to complete the ensemble.

Her soul gem is skull shaped and located on her shoulder.

"So what do witches look like?" she asks Kyubey. It's already told her how to find them with her soul gem and how they mark humans with their cruel kisses to draw them into their labyrinths, but she doesn't know what to expect of them in the visual department. When she tries to imagine one she sees the cliché Halloween-esque hag with warts and a broom.

_"That varies greatly depending on the witch."_

"Alright then," breathes Cassidy. She can handle this. She can totally handle this. Hell, this is probably going to turn into a great routine for letting off steam. She dispels her outfit for the time being in a flash of scarlet and sets out on the streets of Amoris, her soul gem in her hand and Kyubey on her shoulder.

The alley between the hydroponics shop and apartment building makes her gem shine so bright it's almost blinding. She's found one. Okay, it's go time. Taking a deep breath and swearing to herself she isn't nervous, Cassidy transforms and darts into the alley with her claymore raised. She's swallowed up by the labyrinth, a bizarre realm of sunflower skies and cotton candy ground. She doesn't know what she was expecting, but it definitely wasn't this.

"What the fuck?" She feels like she dropped acid on a carousel. Not that any of this was was normal, no, being approached by a wish granting, alien weasel-cat was strange to begin with, being assigned to kill supernatural entities that could not be seen by the naked human passerby eye as payment was just as strange, but only now does Cassidy feel like the fabric of reality itself has torn at the seams.

This place, this labyrinth, looks like an otherworldly collage of dreams on a sugar high and the way it eclipses out the world just— it, it scares her! Then she sees the witch itself. It emerges from the powderpuff of its ground, a wretched creature with a black maggoty body and four spindly legs. It doesn't have eyes but it bears its lipless mouth to reveal rows of rainbow needles for teeth.

Its minions dance around it, all pearlescent and shaped like rock candy. Cassidy scarcely knows what she's even looking at. Something buzzes in her head and she just gapes openly, her tongue going dry. Her grip on the claymore slackens. She was simply not prepared for this..._  
_

_"You should've attacked before she noticed you,"_ Kyubey insists, its voice as impassively cheerful as ever as the witch shrieks a ghastly noise and its minions rapidly begin bouncing toward Cassidy.

"I'll remember it next time," growls Cassidy. She isn't exactly composed, but she knows she can't just stand there and that's enough for her to reassert her grip on the weapon and swing when the first familiar flings itself toward her. The force of the blow is enough to shatter the little beast. She keeps it up as long as she can, swinging and striking and watching them break into shards until they're all subdued.

This just pisses the witch off. It lets out another harrowing, godawful scream and hares toward Cassidy with its mouth stretched wide. There is no tongue, only the rainbow needles. She lifts the claymore high, adrenaline relieving her of doubt. She'll thrust down and—

The witch leaps and launches, barreling right into Cassidy and knocking all the air from her lungs. The claymore falls from her grasp as the witch pins her to the ground. It makes a low throaty noise and lowers its head, the hundreds of needles that line its jaws a mere hairsbreadth from her face. Sparkly purple drool dribbles out like glitter glue and splashes onto her cheek, viscous and hot.

There is no doubt in Cassidy's mind that this thing is going to bite her face off when a_ fwoosh_ is the sound of salvation. The witch rears its head back and caterwauls in pain as electric blue flames lick over its wormy back. It rolls off Cassidy and thrashes madly on the ground as it tries to put the flames out, legs writhing sickly and twitching.

"You! What are you doing here!?"

Cassidy's barely gotten her breath back but it's almost knocked out of her again when she realizes she knows that voice. She bolts upright and whips her head to see a blonde magical girl in a powder blue dress with an empire styled skirt that stops just above her knees, a diamond of fabric cut away to reveal her cleavage. What Cassidy initially perceives as an anklet is her soul gem and there's a flamethrower in her hands.

"Nathalia!" She gawks in complete disbelief. This is the insane icing on today's crazy cake.

The dying cries of the witch wane as the fire consumes it and the labyrinth dissolves, the alley appearing once more. The grief seed left behind clinks softly as it drops to the pavement but neither of them make a move to grab it. Nathalia fixes Kyubey with a cool glower.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you didn't mention this to me."

_"I thought it was best not to, being aware of the animosity that you two hold for each other,"_ Kyubey hops down from its perch on top a window box and lands daintily between the two of them. _"But if you could put that aside, it might work out in the best interests for you both. Cassidy would benefit from the guidance of a senior magical girl and you won't have to compete with her if she's on your side." _

"Wait," exclaims Cassidy. "'Senior magical girl!?'"

"I've been doing this for four years," Nathalia says bluntly. She's quick to turn her gaze back on Kyubey. "And I have no interest in tutoring anyone."

"Like I'd wanna learn from you anyway," Cassidy scoffs. "I don't need help from anyone, especially not your lame ass."

"Right. Because you were totally slaying that witch when I showed up." Nathalia rolled her eyes.

"I would've been if I had a flamethrower too!" Cassidy glares at Kyubey. "How come you didn't give me a flamethrower?"

_"I don't decide what weapons you get or what exact powers you have. Your wish does. I didn't give Nathalia her flamethrower either. She used her magic to mutate one." _

"I'll be taking this." Nathalia plucks the grief seed from the ground and banishes her outfit, a shimmery blue silhouette for a heartbeat before her normal clothes replace it.

"Hey!" Cassidy snaps. "I killed all the minions before you got here! I should get it!"

"It's probably good for two uses," Nathalia replies, already pushing it to her soul gem. "You can have the second use."

Cassidy didn't expect her to actually offer it. She doesn't want it if Nathalia's giving it to her willingly. "I'll just kill another witch and get my own." With a huff, she returns to her own normal attire and irritably stomps out of the alley.

_Ø_

Later she visits Lysandra. Visiting hours are almost over but she makes it in time to get at least ten minutes in, though two or three minutes of that is shaved off when some idiot receptionist earns her ire by referring to Lysandra as a 'him.' She slips into the room as quietly as possible, noting Leigh and her girlfriend, Rosalya, sleeping in the chairs against the wall. Lysandra offers her a little wave as she grabs her own chair and carefully sets it down next to her bed.

"Hey," she whispers. "Sorry I'm so late."

"I was beginning to worry I wouldn't see you today," admits Lysandra.

"I had a run-in with Nathalia." It technically isn't a lie. "How are you feeling?"

"I feel good. Perhaps even a little too good with all the pain medication."

"So it doesn't hurt?" Cassidy irresistibly looks to Lysandra's chest, bulky with bandages beneath the hospital gown.

"Oh no, not at all. The whole thing is a miracle, truly. They thought I was going to die." Lysandra looks almost sheepish when she smiles a close-lipped smile, a ginger wonder touching her bicolored orbs.

Cassidy groans. "Don't remind me." Should she tell Lysandra what she did? Tell her about Kyubey and witches and what she is now? About Nathalia? Would Lysandra made a wish too?

"My apologies." Lysandra's hand envelops hers, strong and warm and squeezing gently.

Cassidy squeezes back and decides yeah, she'll tell her. They're best friends. You don't make a contract with an alien cat-weasel and not tell your best friend about it. She just won't tell her tonight. There's not enough time anyway, another three minutes and the nurse kicks her out.

_Ø_

Nathalia passes her in between classes and they lock glances. They don't need to read minds to know what the other is thinking of. Cassidy can't help puzzling over her. Four years, she'd said she'd been a magical girl. Four years. That's mind-boggling. But it makes Cassidy feel better. If a nerd like Nathalia can keep up the gig that long, she shouldn't have a problem with it.

Said nerd approaches her in the courtyard at lunch with a bento in hand and a look on her face like she just gulped down a lemon whole.

"We should talk."

Cassidy lifts her head and gives a shrug. "Shoot."

Nathalia takes this as an invitation to sit next to her on the bench. It wasn't, but Cassidy lids her disgruntlement in the face of her curiosity.

"You made your wish for Lysandra, didn't you?"

"Yeah." It wasn't exactly a secret that she'd been shot. The robbery had been all over the news, even if the details of her critical condition hadn't.

"How's she doing?"

"It wouldn't kill you to go see her," Cassidy snorts. "I know you're not exactly friends but it's really boring and crappy there and it'd be nice if you brought her a muffin basket or something. She was nice enough to let you in our band."

"Now that I know she can have visitors, I'll make time for it." Nathalia breathes through her nose, golden gaze softening slightly.

"What about you? What'd you wish for?" Cassidy takes a bite out of her sub.

"You'd laugh at me. Anyhow, it doesn't matter."

"Hey, it was your idea to talk. I don't know why you bothered if you're not gonna spill anything."

"I don't like you, but everyone deserves full disclosure. Kyubey doesn't lie but it doesn't tell you everything you should know either." She opens her bento and picks at it with a pair of chopsticks, peeking at Cassidy from the corner of her eye.

"It didn't tell me how to make a flamethrower," says Cassidy drily.

"I'm serious, just...Okay, when did you meet Kyubey?" Nathalia turns to look her full in the face.

"Uh...Three days ago. Why?"

"So that's one day before Lysandra got hurt. It's really convenient timing, don't you think?"

Cassidy inhales sharply, nearly choking on a banana pepper. "You're not saying that Kyubey caused—"

"No, I'm not. All I'm saying is that it has very convenient timing. It did when I made my wish too. And again, it doesn't tell you all the things you should know when you make the contract." Nathalia looks back to her lunch. "Cleaning your soul gem is a lot more important than it lets on. You should've used the grief seed last night. Speaking of grief seeds, only hunt witches. Ignore familiars you find running around without a witch because you won't get any grief seeds out of them."

"But don't familiars still kill people?"

Nathalia nods.

"Then we should take them out whenever we can." Cassidy scowls. "Y'know, for having that reputation as some super sweet and dependable do-gooder, you can be a real heartless bitch."

Nathalia frustratedly pinches the bridge of her nose. "Look, I've been doing this longer than you and I've been able to do it this long for a reason! Can you just be sensible for a few minutes and listen to me? I'm trying to give you advice."

"I didn't ask for your advice," snaps Cassidy. "Now get off the bench before I push you off. I was here first, go eat with Melvin."

Nathalia gets up without another word and saunters off, blonde ponytail bouncing behind her shoulders.

Later that night Cassidy goes out and butchers three familiars just to make a point.

_Ø_

Kyubey isn't around as much as it used to be. It's been two weeks since Cassidy made her contract and she still sees it every other day or so, but it was initially with her almost all the time and it used to come with her on every witch hunt. She wonders if it's because she's getting better at this, or maybe it's out making other contracts.

She sees Nathalia sometimes on her hunts, but they don't speak. Cassidy still envies that flamethrower, damn it, but she's improved at using her claymore. She practices in the basement sometimes, knifing and swiping at the various clutter down there. Demon will sit at the foot of the stairs and watch her like she's nuts.

She glides into the labyrinth of a witch at the abandoned train station, no longer fazed by the transition of the world she knows to one that's sculpted by abstract negativity. This one is walled by long, long corridors and an infinite ceiling. Frames with no pictures line the vacant white walls, all kinds of frames; square, oval, black, brown, studded with rhinestones or plain, small enough to fit in her palm or big enough for her to walk through.

The witch is at the center of the labyrinth, an artist's palette as big as a car with all the colors smeared together into a lumpy brown mash. Instead of a hole for a paintbrush to go through there is a bloodshot eye staring at her, staring through her and sensing her intention here. The witch emits a shrill ring so high-pitched that Cassidy is stunned when blood doesn't geyser out of her ears. Familiars bob out from behind the witch, limbless paintbrushes half the size of Cassidy herself with cyclops eyes and vertical mouths full of sharklike teeth.

Cassidy zigzags this way and that as they menacingly close in on her, nimbly sidestepping one to slay another and pivoting around in swift circles to ensure that she never has her back to any one place for more than ten seconds. Every familiar her blade shaves spurts the color of the tips of their respective brushes and pitches down dead (are they really considered alive?).

White-hot pain sears as one of them manages to bite her as her arm is pulled back, its teeth sawing through the flesh of her forearm. Gritting her teeth, Cassidy swings her elbow around and cuts the pesky minion in half. Its jaws go slack as the lower half of its body falls and she shakes it out. With the number of them dwindled, she races right for the witch, and skewers it through its massive eye.

The labyrinth disappears, the only token it was there the grief seed. She scoops it up and dispels her magic, clearing her soul gem right on the spot. It was looking pretty cloudy, so she feels rather satisfied to watch it glimmer brightly once more. The wound in her arm isn't too pretty and stings with a vengeance but it's already stopped bleeding. She isn't worried. Scars are cool anyway.

Lysandra is eating a blueberry muffin when she visits. The room has gone from being bare to having vases of flowers, balloons, cards, gift bags and even a giant stuffed bunny as tall as Cassidy herself that she thinks is totally ridiculous, but Lysandra just adores.

"Hey," she greets with a crooked little smile, dragging the chair over and plopping down.

"Hi," Lysandra greets through a mouthful of muffin. "Would you like one?"

"Nah, you know muffins aren't really my thing." Cassidy sticks her tongue out.

"Oh, but these are really good. They aren't too sweet or dry, they're pleasantly— Oh my! What happened to your arm?" Lysandra's eyes widen in shock.

"Err...I don't know if you'd believe me if I told you. I'm alright though."

Lysandra puts the muffin down and licks the crumbs off her lips, brows narrowing as she studies her friend closely. "Is there something going on? Lately you're exhausted whenever I see you and this isn't the first time you've been bleeding."

"Eh? Bleeding?" Cassidy spares a glance. Huh. She is bleeding again. It's only a little trickle though. "Oh...But I'm fine. You shouldn't be worrying about me. I should be making sure you're okay."

"I'm getting out in three days," Lysandra replies, worry still shadowing her features. "I'm actually recovering a lot better than they expected me to. I think they're only keeping me here now because they're puzzled over the lack of complications."

"That's good. We should see a movie or something when you're free." She lays her head on Lysandra's bed because Lysandra's right, she is exhausted. But she thinks it's a nice kind of fatigue. Fighting witches is just as good a way as letting off steam as she'd hoped it would be and she's keeping people safe. She's not the type to get mushy and sentimental, but keeping people safe is...Well, it's a good thing.

Lysandra warmly strokes her fingers through her scarlet tresses, charily avoiding the bump she doesn't mention.

_Ø_

"Are there any other magical girls in Amoris aside from me and Buttface?" Cassidy asks as she impales the solo familiar and twists her hilt to intensity the killing blow. It looks like a candle with tentacles and dissolves into an orange mist that smells like mildew.

_"By 'Buttface' I'm sure you mean Nathalia, so no, not at the moment."_ Kyubey scratches its ear with a neat paw.

"I was just wondering 'cause I haven't seen any other ones." Cassidy stretches and lazily twirls her weapon.

_"You and Nathalia do a pretty good job of keeping the witch population down around here. And you're more harmonious with each other than most magical girls that share a city. It's nearly as common for magical girls to kill each other over territory as it is for magical girls to be killed by witches." _

Cassidy cringes. She can't stand Nathalia and it does irk her when Nathalia kills witches she has her eye on, not to mention the fact that she just lets familiars roam free, but she'd never kill her in cold blood.

"If I told Lysandra about all this, would you let her see you? So she doesn't think I've gone off the deep end."

_"Sure. She could make a contract too if she has something to wish for. I've sensed her potential."_

"Potential?" Cassidy tilts her head.

_"Some girls would make better magical girls than others. I usually approach the girls I sense the best potential off of but I'd never turn down anyone who wanted to contract. Your friend's potential isn't the best but she's not bad either. I'm sure she'd be proficient at the very least."_ Kyubey swishes its tail.

"Huh." It made sense. Cassidy wasn't sure how she'd feel if Lysandra became a magical girl. It is dangerous...But then manning a storefront of a clothing shop isn't supposed to be that dangerous and she got shot doing that. At any rate she just wants to stop being a dodgy weirdo and tell Lysandra the truth. And she's going to do just that, as soon as she's done with her witch hunt.

She's ready to call it quits for the night when forty-five minutes later she still hasn't found anything, when she does find something. There's a labyrinth behind the florist's shop. She transforms and sprints right into it. As soon as she's swept up in the surreality she can hear its terrible, pained screaming that for once sounds so human. Then she realizes it sounds human because it is human, it's not the witch that's screaming, it's Nathalia.

She lies battered and spasming on the crimson carpet before the witch, a sword composed of shadow pierced through her chest. _No_; it looks like that, but really the shaded blade is rising _from_ her chest. It's magnetically drawn to the witch who hangs above in a stained glass window, the a silhouette of a young girl turned to a pincushion by swords, particularly in the back where the twin clusters of them are so thick and precise they look as though to mimic angel wings. The surrounding glass is crimson and spiderwebbed with cracks.

The entire labyrinth looks like a cathedral, from the coffins with rose crests on their lids scattered all around the stoney floor, to the dead rose petals that litter amongst them, and to empty pews that primate like familiars with red neckties chitter around and climb over. One of them is chewing on Nathalia's broken flamethrower. Other familiars that look like shadow puppet girls cavort along the walls. Cassidy pumps her legs as hard as she can, striding right for the witch with her claymore ready to slash.

"Don't be stupid," Nathalia rebukes her in a strained utterance, syllables nearly guttural. Her hands are grasped tight around the blade of the sword that's slowly working itself from her body. Despite being a silhouette rather than a solid blade, it's still cutting her and ruby river networks stream unhindered through her fingers. "It's too strong!"

Cassidy's a millisecond away from telling her to shut up when one of the familiars attacks her from behind. It clings to her back and bites into her throat, onyx eyes gleaming. She stumbles forward, claymore scraping the stone and sending up sparks. She reaches back to grab it and another one skitters between her legs, tripping her. Unbalanced, she lurches to the side and nearly kisses the ground.

"Whatever you do, don't touch the witch," Nathalia calls faintly, a voice of bricks through windows.

Cassidy's busy enough with the familiars! More scramble and dart though her legs, as quick as mice caught stealing the cheese. When she finally rips the biting one off her neck, another jumps from the ground and sinks its teeth into her hand. She shakes it off and grips the handle of her claymore with both hands, slicing wildly through the purple swarm of them at her boots.

They're either killed or dispersed and Cassidy seizes that moment to continue charging the witch. She uses one of the coffins as a ramp to run up and leap off, swinging back her blade and striking hard. The witch is supposed to die. That does not happen. What happens is that another crack is added to its stained glass body and she's strewn back onto the carpet by a beam of crackling energy. Pain explodes in her back and riddles all though her limbs, and suddenly there's a blaze of agony where her heart is.

When she lifts her head she can see a shadowy hilt rising out of her chest. She can feel it too, a blade creeping up and out of her every tiny stitch per stitch and burning like hellfire. She cries out a little and tries to push it back it. She can manage it, but doing so is such intense torture that her ears pop and dynamite detonates in her vision.

"Told you not to touch the witch," Nathalia grates out. Her bloody fingers climb the ghost of a sword that emerges from within her, palms pressing to the imitation blade and working it back down slowly.

"We gotta get of here," Cassidy declares, sitting up and kicking away another familiar. She knows she can't beat it. It's simply too powerful and she came here unprepared. This is the kind of witch it takes a strategy to defeat. She stands and when Nathalia lags, she does her a favor and pushes the shadowy sword back inside her. Nathalia's either about to curse at her or scream in pain so she grabs her by the wrist and just starts running, not even caring if she's dragging her until they've made it beyond the labyrinth.

Nathalia stares at her, eyes a pair of gelid suns in her skull and breath leaving her busted lips in pants.

"Now we're even." Cassidy barely understands what just happened. Witches all have different abilities, but getting something unknowably essential condensed inside her and drawn out as a weapon in steady increments chills her spine and rattles any private sense of security she might've felt.

"I left my flamethrower in there."

_Ø_

Upon answering the door, Lysandra's eyes spark and she practically yanks Cassidy inside. She physically guides her to the bathroom and makes her sit on the side of the bathtub despite Cassidy's protests, and digs the first aid kit out from under the sink.

"Please be honest with me," Lysandra murmurs as she paws through supplies. "Whatever it is you're doing I won't judge you, you know that, but I'm beginning to worry about you."

"It's kind of hard to explain." Cassidy rubs at the back of her neck and winces. "But here goes...A weasel-cat from space granted my wish, so to pay it off I gotta fight witches."

Lysandra's head snaps up and she peers at Cassidy with unbridled alarm. "Do you have a concussion? Tell me, did you hit your head anywhere?"

"I know it sounds like I'm on crack, but it's true. Kyubey can probably explain it better than I can."

"Kyu what?" Lysandra's forehead creases with concern.

_"Hello."_ The minute albino bounds into the bathroom and hops up to sit beside Cassidy.

It does indeed explain everything better and Lysandra listens intently the whole time, dabbing at the redhead's cuts with cotton balls dipped in peroxide. Cassidy's too tired to protest, even when Lysandra charily tapes gauze to the worst of the punctures in her flesh. By the time Kyubey's finished Lysandra is finished too.

"What exactly did you wish for?" she asks, the puzzle pieces coming together.

"To save you."

Lysandra's eyes fondly twinkle and her lips curve tenderly at the corners. She scoots forward on her knees and embraces Cassidy around the waist with no reservations. Cassidy feels embarrassment toasting her cheeks.

"It's no big deal. You would've done the same for me."

Lysandra nods and raises her head. "I would. In fact, I want to. Take me with you the next time you go hunting."

"What?" Cassidy's eyes popped in bemusement.

"This witch fighting is a perilous endeavor. Take me with you. If you find yourself overwhelmed, I can contract and help."

"I already am a little overwhelmed," Cassidy admits tentatively. "The witch today kicked my ass and Nat's ass. We don't really do the team up thing, but since this witch is really strong we agreed to take a crack at it together tomorrow. But I don't know how useful she's gonna be without her flamethrower..." Cassidy trails off. She isn't sure how much she wants Lysandra exposed to this kind of danger.

But she's Lysandra's friend, not her mother. Lysandra also has the option of contracting as a safety net. Besides, she'll be there to protect her if things do get hairy.

"I'll go with you," assures Lysandra.

"Are you sure?" Cassidy still has to ask.

"Of course I'm sure. You made your wish for me. You're putting yourself at risk daily in the name of that wish I owe my life to. The least I can do is be there to help." Lysandra's smile beams and she finally releases Cassidy from her hug.

Cassidy's too tired to go home, so she spends the night in Lysandra's bed. She pretends to be asleep when her friend kisses her forehead with satin lips and pretends to be indignant when they wake up spooning.

_Ø_

Nathalia raises her brows when Cassidy meets her outside the labyrinth with Lysandra in tow, Kyubey perched on the latter's shoulder. Something like concern crosses her features and fades to leave a dull disapproval.

"You didn't have to get Lysandra to contract just for this. I told you last night, I know where its weak spot is."

"I didn't contract," Lysandra explains before Cassidy can chew her head off for the misunderstanding. "I'm here to do so if you two need the assistance."

Nathalia breathes a tight sigh, shoulders slumping like she's too weary to be wary. "Okay then."

"So what were you saying about its weak spot?" asks Cassidy. "And why do you have a broom?"

"I have a broom because I'm not sure I'll get my flamethrower back." Nathalia glowers at the broom as though it's the one to blame and then glances back to Cassidy. "There's a rose where the witch's heart is, growing out of a crack in the glass. It's hard to see because it's black but it's there. Knock the rose off its chest and it'll die."

"Are you sure?" Cassidy's eyes glint dubiously.

"About eighty-seven percent sure, yeah."

"Shouldn't you be more sure than that before we get that close to it again?"

"Do you have a better idea?" Nathalia asks flatly.

"Tch, fine. What's the plan?"

"I'll kill it. You cover me against the familiars. Lysandra...Try to hide behind a coffin and don't contract unless you absolutely have to."

It's not a spectacular plan, but it's a plan. This time when they enter the labyrinth the witch is more restless. Perhaps it's because they're all entering together and none of them are incapacitated (yet), or because it senses that two of them are the ones that escaped yesterday, or maybe it's for another reason entirely. Its haunting scream is the scream of a thousand blades breaking, of a chaotic revolution disintegrating to an empty movement.

The primate like familiars and the shaded puppet ones on the wall instantly grow antsier, get louder. The pews rattle and scrape the stone floor, reverberating with their creator's cries.

"It's furious," Nathalia says needlessly, drawing a sparkling hand over the broom. The bristles morph to spikes and the handle goes crystalline, and Cassidy reminds herself to ask Nathalia how she does that later.

Lysandra ducks behind a coffin as she was instructed to and Cassidy pelts forward, slashing familiars out of the path. She swivels with her claymore inclined to decapitate them and Nathalia agilely surges after her, eyes narrowed intently on the witch's breast. They met each other's gaze and an understanding is exchanged. Cassidy swoops back and draws her blade in an arc around Nathalia to deter the familiars behind her.

Nathalia passes her up and uses a pew as a boost, adroitly vaulting herself toward the witch, her broom poised like a spear. She thrusts it forward just as the witch lets out another horrendous wail. The noise distracts her, she misses the rose by just a fraction and scratches the glass just above the crown of its petals. She's blasted back as the witch continues screaming and the pews themselves bounce into the air, floor cracking as the witch's metallic cries pitch keenly. The cacophony is insufferable.

Cassidy weaves about on her feet, avoiding the slithering cracks. She jumps hastily and whips her blade toward the witch, only to be bopped aside by the edge of a falling pew and sent sailing into the wall. She coughs as pain rockets through her back, teeth clacking harshly when she slides down to the floor. She's at the mercy of the shadow puppet familiars. They claw and pull at her limbs, claymore slipping from her dazed fingers as they whisper excitedly in a language that doesn't exist.

"Cassidy!" Lysandra abandons her hiding spot and races forward, Kyubey lightly hopping from her shoulder and onto the lid of another coffin. Lysandra glances back to it, her collected voice echoing as she announces, "I wish that—"

A plummeting pew collapses right on top of her before she can finish her sentence, muscles squelching and bones crunching as she's rendered to a viscid pulp.

Cassidy's scream twines with the witch's, nearly just as inhuman.

Fuzzy black steals her vision.

_Ø_

Nathalia is the first thing she sees when her consciousness returns. Nathalia bloody-faced with stricken eyes, an eggplant bruise swelling on her chin as the labyrinth wavers and dissipates behind her. Cassidy doesn't realize Nathalia is carrying her until she puts her down on the cement. She doesn't recall what's become of Lysandra until the grief seed clatters.

She jolts upright and gasps, a lump snowballing in her throat. Her gaze darts around with frantic false hope that maybe it was an illusion, maybe it was a nightmare, maybe—

"You shouldn't have brought her." Nathalia kills her hope in a tone of melting icicles.

Cassidy inhales air that razes her lungs and chokes out a sob.

"Keep the grief seed. You need it more." Nathalia toes the object toward her and then turns around, dismissing her outfit as she walks away.

Cassidy draws herself up to a quaking stand. Her stomach roils and tears river from her charcoal depths, Lysandra's smile in her mind's eye and regret carving out her insides. She punches the brick of the florist's shop as hard as she can, knuckles blowing open and pain splitting down her arm. She doesn't care and she clenches her teeth and punches it again even though they're raw, and she doesn't care when they break or that she can hear the bones pop.

Lysandra is dead because of her fucking stupidity!

She screams at herself through her sobs as snot and tears pool on her upper lip and she just punches and punches until her hand won't do what she wants it to anymore.

How could she let this happen!?

Self-hatred coils low and deep in the pits of guilt. Sorrow drains her heart until it's hollow and builds a scratchy nest between the rungs of her ribs, stuffing so full she could asphyxiate on it. She kicks the grief seed out of the way and goes home.

_Ø_

Cassidy just fights and fights and fights because she doesn't know what else to do. Fighting is a distraction, a reprieve from the measureless mourning that stalks her at every waking moment, an interruption in her life as the despicable person who led her best friend to her demise. When she's fighting she can block out the pain and scrap up phantoms of relief in knowing on some level at least that she is helping someone.

She despises herself more than words can convey and she uses that as fuel to recklessly drive herself to the thick of every labyrinth, into the face of every wretched witch. She skips school to hunt during the day and avoid all the eyes, the pitiful pitying eyes of classmates who gossip about her best friend's status as a missing person.

Their pity digs deep and twists in her like a knife, unwanted, undeserved. It's her fault! It's all her fault!

She loses herself in the fabric of magic and slays familiar after familiar, witch after witch, with fantastical limbs or no limbs at all, living in worlds of wire or polka dots or papier-mâché. She utters battle cries and slaughters them until she's too enervated to twitch her fingers, until everything she has to offer is depleted down to the last grain of vitality in her body, until she's fought with everything down to her own eye teeth. _  
_

Sometimes Cassidy sleeps where she falls when the labyrinths vanish and she prefers these desolate, nondescript places to home anyway. She never bothers with the grief seeds anymore. Her soul gem is tainted and she doesn't care because she's tainted too, she's a shitty magical girl who lost the very person she made her wish for to her own careless folly.

She still sees Nathalia sometimes but they hardly ever speak. If they ever do, it's Nathalia who initiates interaction with a cryptic word or an insensitive scolding and Cassidy just snarls at her until she backs off. She's so on top of things here in Amoris, obsessed and battling whenever she gets the chance, that she branches out to the next city over.

The magical girls there, Jade and Dajané, are so busy fighting each other they don't notice when she slips in and takes out a familiar that looks like an oversized leopard print purse, painting everything in spots in its wake.

She doesn't care when she's too weak to move afterward, or when lacerations litter her skin. If she dies it's fine, it's all fine because she hates herself anyway.

_I'm so sorry, Lysandra._

A single tear rolls down her cheek as her tired eyes flutter closed, a park bench serving as tonight's bed.

_Ø_

Tonight's witch is a fearsome creature, a heart shape composed of a patchwork of meats from ham to hotdogs, a tiara of shrapnel perpetually hovering over its head. If you could call that a head, which Cassidy doesn't. Its familiars are scepters of pastrami and jeweled cleavers that leave flickers behind, almost like strobe lights, as they jab and stab at her.

Though she isn't aware of it, this is her last time fighting a witch and it ends the same as her first fight did. It ends with her on her back beneath the atrocious beast, mere heartbeats from being done for and blue flames finishing off what she couldn't finish herself.

Nathalia lands gracefully as the labyrinth dies with its master and cooly gazes down at Cassidy. "You look like it chewed you up, swallowed you, and crapped you out."

Cassidy laughs bitterly and stands up, staggering forward and almost pitching right to the ground again. She_ feels_ like the witch ate her and crapped her out. Exhaustion is taking its toll on her and the first layer of her skin is a surface of welts. She can feel something giving way inside her, maybe it's self-preservation. Then again, she's sure she lost that weeks ago.

"Shame on you, Nat. Aren't you the one who bitches at me for being vulgar?"

Nathalia sniffs and dispels her costume, bending to pick up the grief seed.

Cassidy does the same, but it saps up the last droplet of energy she has and she crumples to her knees, soul gem rolling out of her weary fingers.

Nathalia glances over. "Honestly, you're just— " She breaks off as she lays eyes on Cassidy's soul gem, spine going ramrod straight and gasp flying from her lips. "You haven't been cleansing it at all?!"

"Guess not," mumbles Cassidy wryly. She picks it up with fingers that shake and cups it in her palm. The original scarlet only remains in a flickering sliver, barely existent under the patina of swirling darkness.

"Idiot! You have to fix that!" Nathalia recoils almost like it's a bomb about to go off, like she's afraid of it, and tosses the grief seed she just picked up at Cassidy.

Cassidy scoffs, too acerbic and too drained to grab it. "What happens if I don't, huh? I never did learn that. I lose my powers? Well I'm fine with that. What kind of a magical girl am I, anyway? I make the wish to save my best friend and then I can't even protect her when I promise I will." She'd mused about what would happen before, and guessed that it might be that. Her powers came from the gem after all, so it'd make sense.

"Listen to me," Nathalia squawks, practically desperate. Cassidy would find it amusing if she wasn't so many levels of done right now. "Cleanse it now! It's much, much worse than losing your powers!"

"Oh, then I die?" Cassidy wonders bleakly. She figured that was pretty likely, too. It was called a_ soul_ gem, after all.

"No! It's worse than that! Your _humanity_ dies! You become a witch!"

"...What?" Cassidy whispers in horror, blood instantly turned to ice. That's what happens!? She'll turn into one of those egregious things!? Wait, does that mean that every witch...!? She slowly raises her head, a snowstorm of terror and panic blasting through her synapses. She looks to her darkened gem and this is the straw that breaks her back. She succumbs to despair and her soul shatters into millions of corrupted shards, a grief seed emerged in its place.

A new witch hatches.

* * *

**Almost continued this in witch!perspective. Got lazy and I already missed le deadline. Baaah. There's probably so many typos in this piece of crap. I'll like, scan for those and try to correct 'em.**

**Now to go back to requests e3e**


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